The 18z GFS is predicting Montpelier, Vermont (the capital of Vermont) to receive 4 FEET OF SNOW on January 10th. This comes as a disturbance is forecast to move around just offshore the Northeast Coast. If this were to turn out, it would, no exaggeration here, collapse roofs. Home would be flattened. 4 feet of snow is about as tall as a 9 year old boy. Luckily, this is the long range GFS, which we all know is not reliable in the least.

Something to look out for: If the January 4th snowstorm happens, this storm would be worth watching, because at both time periods the NAO is forecasted to drop. Not into negative territory, but still a drop. Storms can happen during a fluctuation in the NAO, even a drop like what is possible during the 2 storms.

The ECMWF is showing a once in a lifetime snowstorm for the Northeast on January 4th. Above, we see the ECMWF image for the January 4th timeframe. On the top right image we see the incredibly strong low pressure system moving up the coast of the East US. If this were to verify, it would be ALL SNOW. Totals, if this were to happen, would EASILY EXCEED 18 INCHES OF SNOW. So the question is, will this happen?

The NAO says NO. When the NAO is positive, historically snowstorms are fighting a very uphill battle to happen, thus the lack of snowstorms this winter as we have seen a very positive NAO. Despite this, we are trying to see if the LRC pattern may have this storm in its sights. By using a comparison between 45-50 days (the estimated cycle time this year), a storm did show up 45-50 days ago that can be matched loosely with this ECMWF forecast. We will continue monitoring this, but the +NAO can be a real killer.

There is a tornado risk today for the eastern regions of North Carolina and South Carolina. It is interesting, as the 5% region of the tornado risk is unusually large. This is indicative of an increased tornado risk, but not enough to rise to 10%. Let's take a look at some maps indicative of the severe weather risk.

Mesoscale Convective System Maintenance

A mesoscale convective system (MCS) is basically a cluster of thunderstorms. Maintenance means the ability to upkeep. Putting it together means that this graphic indicates the potential for a cluster of thunderstorms to upkeep itself. Right now, we are seeing over a 90 in the Carolinas into the Virginias. This means that conditions are favorable for a cluster of thunderstorms. Clusters of thunderstorms typically are not as conductive for tornadoes as single cells are. If you're thinking that this is just one parameter of many, you are wrong. This MCS Maintenance parameter contains over 340 other parameters.

300mb wind speeds (jet stream)

We are seeing a split flow in the jet stream with these storms. If you follow the jet stream along the Gulf Coast, we come to a separation of the main path the jet stream takes as well as a smaller, almost nonexistent mini jet stream. This is what's called a split flow. Split flow patterns happen when the force of rising air is able to divert the jet stream off its original path. The split flow pattern is a good indicator that some severe weather is possible.

Here's a little indicator we've put together of severe weather using many severe weather indices.
Region: North Carolina, South Carolina

We are conducting a massive scan of our entire publishing station at this time after Facebook indicated that we hard contracted a malware virus.
However, we are denying this theory.
Thanks to a couple active viewers of this blog, we are able to determine that other computers are not affected by this potential malware.
We are thinking that this was a false alarm and, if it was indeed a false alarm, we know why.

Again, we do not believe there is any malware and that this was a false alarm on Facebook's part.
However, we do take these potential security threats very seriously and thank those who conducted security scans and were able to tell us a lot of information.

It appears that our publishing station has contracted some form of malware.
We have found that we cannot post links on our Facebook Page, and we believe that this is the suspected malware.
Facebook has temporarily locked us out of our account due to this suspected malware.We have not found any problems on our blog here, and have every reason to believe that this blog is unaffected.
However, if you feel that your computer may be at risk (we do not believe it is), please run a security scan soon to see if your computer contracted any form of bad software. If you did, we highly encourage you to comment on any post with what the malicious software is. Then, we can try to compare it to our security scans and see if we can fix this problem.
This blog will continue to provide weather regularly. This will not be interrupting our posting duties.

Again, as of now, we have no reason to believe that this has infected other computers. The only problem we have had is being unable to post links on our Facebook Page.

Precipitation is occurring in big green blob over Great Lakes.
Theoretically, everything inside the black and red lines is snow.

We are beginning to see a changeover to snow in the Great Lakes this morning as a storm system moves eastward across the southern half of the country. There is an outline of a red line. Inside that red outlined area is the boundary layer at 0 degrees celsius. That same red outline also contains a black outline. That black outline symbolizes that everything inside that area is surface temperatures at the freezing level. We expect this area of freezing temperatures to expand as a cold front works its way from Canada down south. It appears that states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and western New York could get in on the heavier snows.

850mb temperature advection

We can see that the cold front is present by taking a look at 850mb Temperature Advections. There is a region of substantially lowered temperatures over the last several hours in the North Great Lakes as that cold front progresses southeast-ward. We need to keep an eye on the cold front, as the amount of interaction, area of initial 'impact', and temperature difference all depend on snow totals. If there is a greater amount of interaction than forecasted, i.e. the cold front dips farther south than anticipated, snow totals may increase further south. If there is less interaction, snow totals may be lower than forecasted. The area of initial impact is where we expect the first cold wave from the cold front to hit. If it hits somewhere other than forecasted, that 'somewhere' may end up with more snow due to a quicker changeover. Finally, temperature difference depends on the snowfall. Like a cold front in spring that ignites storms, this cold front may ignite areas of heavy snowfall. Depending on how much difference there is in temperature, we may be seeing heavier snow if there is more difference, or less snow if there is a lesser difference in temperatures.

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